Every few weeks, I will post my thoughts from various books, articles, and discussions – as an extension of my desire to understand better the relationship between human behavioral health and counseling/psychotherapy. This blog is NOT intended to diagnose, treat, or replace person-to-person psychological, medical, or legal professional consultation.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE)
Several weeks ago, I attended a two-day workshop in the beautiful university town of Boulder, Colorado. I always like visiting Boulder for its “uniqueness”. Readers who’ve been there will understand what I mean by that. The workshop leader was Carol Forgash, LCSW; a specialist in trauma therapy. Among the more helpful features of the workshop was learning about the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study conducted as a collaborative research effort between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, and Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, California. The two principal investigators were Robert F. Anda, MD, with the CDC, and Vincent J. Felitti, MD, with Kaiser Permanente.
Over 17,000 Kaiser patients participating in routine health screening volunteered to participate in The Study; one of the largest investigations ever conducted to assess the associations between adverse childhood experiences and later-life health and well-being. Specifically, the data–which continues to be analyzed–reveals sobering proof of the health, social, and economic risks that result from childhood trauma in the United States. This is to suggest, according to The Study, that some of the worst health and social problems in the nation can arise as a consequence of adverse childhood experiences.
While the ACE Study proper was conducted in the mid-1990s, some of the concepts had their beginnings in 1985. Dr. Felitti, a specialist in Preventive Medicine, initially intended to help obese people lose weight. Surprisingly, ironically, those patients most likely to drop out of of his weight loss program were those who were successfully losing weight! Upon closer examination of almost 300 such patients, Dr. Felitti learned that many had been using obesity as a defense against unwanted sexual and/or physical attack. Many of these individuals has been sexually and/or physically abused as children. While obesity initially presented as “the problem,” it was often found that “the problem” served as the unconscious “solution” to other, more covert problems; namely, abuse! This was unexpected. And, as is often the case, many of these patients were reluctant from telling anyone about the abuse–including medical personnel–because of familial and social taboos.
As the ACE Study began to take shape, the research team found that in the majority of situations, several ACEs existed in a child’s home. A simple scoring system was developed–called the ACE Score–in which one point was given (0-10) for each category of exposure to childhood abuse and/or neglect before age 18. Although 1/3 of participants (remember, we’re talking 17,000) reported no ACEs, 2/3’s reported ACEs – which often turned out to be cumulative. Researchers discovered that the higher the score, the greater the exposure–and risk–of negative consequences throughout life – including early death.
The ACE Questionnaire/Scoring reads as follows:
While you were growing up, during your first 18 years of life:
1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often…swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or,act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often…push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or, ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever…touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or, attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
4. Did you often or very often feel that…no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or, your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
5. Did you often or very often feel that…you didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or, your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
6. Were your parents ever separated or divorced? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
7. Was your mother or stepmother: Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or, sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or ever repeatedly hit at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
8. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic or who used street drugs? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
9. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
10. Did a household member go to prison? Yes No (If yes, enter 1 __)
Now add up your “Yes” answers: _____ This is your ACE Score.
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For additional information about the ACE Study, see www.acestudy.org.
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Perhaps the Best Parenting Advice – Ever!
It was several years ago while browsing through a used book store, that I happened upon the book. Hardback. Green cover. Red ribbon book marker, like those found in Bibles. Were it not for the tattered “green” cover, I might have mistaken it for a Bible. Upon closer inspection, the title read: Children: The Challenge. Copyright: 1964. Retail price: $9.95. Sale price: $4.95. A “good deal” by most standards. Even now as I craft this blog post, the book continues to lose bits and pieces of its aging green cover. The author? Rudolph Dreikurs, MD, the Viennese-born psychiatrist who migrated to the United States in the late 1930s. The “good deal” instantly became a “good steal.”
Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs was born in Vienna, Austria in 1897. He graduated from the medical school of the University of Vienna, after which he spent five years doing his internship and residency in psychiatry. In the process, Dr. Dreikurs became interested in the teachings of renowned Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Alfred Adler, with whom he became a close collaborator. Dreikurs moved to the United States in 1937 until his death in 1972. At the time of death, he was Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Chicago Medical School and Director of the Alfred Adler Institute of Chicago.
Developing the Adlerian system of psychology into a pragmatic method for understanding misbehavior in children, Dreikurs (and Adler) believed that “encouragement” was essential to improving human behavior and relationships. Simply entitled “Encouragement”, chapter three begins:
“Encouragement is more important than any other aspect of child-raising. It is so important that the lack of it can be considered the basic cause for misbehavior. A misbehaving child is a discouraged child” (author’s italics).
“A misbehaving child is a discouraged child.”
Whatever else modern research adds or subtracts from this statement, discouragement and misbehavior are indeed linked. Dreikurs continues:
“Each child needs continuous encouragement just as a plant needs water….However, the techniques of child-raising that we use today present a series of discouraging experiences…..Children respond to their various predicaments with a tremendous desire to gain skills and to overcome the deep sense of their own smallness and inadequacy. They so dearly want to be an integrated part of the family. However, in their attempts to gain recognition and to find a place, they meet with constant discouragement….
Three-year-old Paul was putting on his new suit so that he could go to the store with Mother. ‘Come here, Paul. Let me finish for you. You are too slow.’
Paul is made to feel inefficient in the face of Mother’s magic ability to do things quickly. Discouraged, he gives up and lets Mother dress him.
In a thousand subtle ways, by tone of voice and by action, we indicate to the child that we consider him inept, unskilled, and generally inferior. In the face of all this he still tries to find his place and make his mark….
Whenever we act to support the child in a courageous and confident self-concept, we offer encouragement. There is no pat answer to the problem. It involves careful study and thought on the part of the parents. We must observe the result of our training…and repeatedly ask ourselves, ‘What is this method doing to my child’s self-concept?’
The child’s behavior gives the clue to his (sic) self-estimate. The child who doubts his own ability and his own value will demonstrate it through his deficiencies. He no longer seeks to belong through usefulness, participation, and contributions. In his discouragement, he turns to useless and provocative behavior. Convinced that he is inadequate and cannot contribute, he determines that at least he will be noticed, one way or another. To be spanked is better than to be ignored. And there is some distinction in being known as ‘the bad boy.'” (Dreikurs is reminding me of the “Law of the Soggy Potato Chip”, attributed (I think) to psychologist Fitzhugh Dodson. Give a child the choice between a crisp potato chip [positive attention] and a soggy potato chip [negative attention], s/he will choose the crisp potato chip. But, give a child the choice between a soggy potato chip [negative attention] and no potato chip at all (ignored), s/he will choose the soggy potato chip. In other words, anything is better than being ignored.)
In chapter four of Children: The Challenge, Dreikurs discusses four “mistaken goals” which often motivate a child’s misbehavior in lieu of encouragement: undue attention, control, resentment, and inadequacy. Significantly, these four “mistaken goals” can be reduced to three of four categorical emotions: MAD, SAD, and SCARED. Conversely, “encouragement” promotes GLAD.
Chapter six of Children: The Challenge, discusses “The Use of Natural and Logical Consequences” versus the ineffectiveness of punishment, and even reward.
Today, we may be more familiar with the helpful concepts and methodologies of Foster Cline, MD and Jim Fay–namely, “Love and Logic”–but many of the original concepts and methodologies clearly belong to Rudolph Dreikurs and Alfred Adler.
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Mental Associations – Matter!
In their book Buddha’s Brain; The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, & Wisdom (2009), authors Rick Hanson, PhD and Richard Mendius, MD observe:
“When two things are held in mind at the same time, they start to connect with each other.”
Think of this in terms of good news/bad news. First, the good news. Hanson and Mendius write:
“Positive experiences can…be used to soothe, balance, and even replace negative ones. When two things are held in mind at the same time, they start to connect with each other. That’s one reason why talking about hard things with someone who’s supportive can be so healing: painful feelings and memories get infused with the comfort, encouragement, and closeness you experience with the other person.
These mental minglings draw on the neural machinery of memory. When a memory–whether implicit or explicit–is made, only its key features are stored, not every detail….When your brain retrieves a memory, it does not do it like a computer does, which calls up a complete record of what’s on its hard drive (e.g., document, picture, song). Your brain rebuilds implicit and explicit memories from their key features, drawing on its simulating capacities to fill in missing details….And your brain is so fast that you don’t notice the regeneration of each memory.
This rebuilding process gives you the opportunity, right down in the micro-circuitry of your brain, to gradually shift the emotional shadings of your interior landscape….Then, when the memory leaves awareness, it will be consolidated in storage along with those other associations. The next time the memory is activated, it will tend to bring those associations with it. Thus, if you repeatedly bring to mind negative feelings and thoughts while a memory is active, then that memory will be increasingly shaded in a negative direction….On the other hand, if you call up positive emotions and perspectives while implicit or explicit memories are active, these wholesome influences will slowly be woven into the fabric of those memories.
Now for the bad news. If two things, held in mind at the same time, begin to connect with each other, consider the downside of association. In his book, The Brain That Changes Itself (2007; definitely a book worth reading), Columbia University psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge, MD gives one such example from Internet pornography’s effects on the brain. In a chapter entitled “Acquiring Tastes and Loves,” Doidge writes:
“The current porn epidemic gives a graphic demonstration that sexual tastes can be acquired. Pornography , delivered by high-speed Internet connections, satisfies every one of the prerequisites for neuroplastic change….During the mid- to late 1990s, when the Internet was growing rapidly and pornography was exploding on it, I treated or assessed a number of men who all had essentially the same story. Each had acquired a taste for a kind of pornography that, to a greater or lesser degree, troubled or even disgusted him, had a disturbing effect on the pattern of sexual excitement, and ultimately affected his relationships and sexual potency.
None of these men were fundamentally immature, socially awkward, or withdrawn from the world into a massive pornography collection that was a substitute for relationships with real women. These were pleasant, generally thoughtful men, in reasonably successful relationships or marriages….A number of these men also reported something else, often in passing, that caught my attention. They reported increasing difficulty in being turned on by their actual sexual partners….When I asked if this phenomenon had any relationship to viewing pornography, they answered that it initially helped them get more excited during sex but over time had the opposite effect….Their sexual fantasy lives were increasingly dominated by the scenarios that they had, so to speak, downloaded into their brains, and these new scripts were often more primitive and more violent than their previous sexual fantasies. I got the impression that any sexual creativity these men had was dying and that they were becoming addicted to Internet porn.
The changes I observed are not confined to a few people in therapy. A social shift is occurring….The addictiveness of Internet pornography is not a metaphor. Not all addictions are to drugs or alcohol. People can be seriously addicted to gambling, even to running. All addicts show a loss of control over the activity, compulsively seek it out despite negative consequences, develop tolerance so that they need higher and higher levels of stimulation for satisfaction, and experience withdrawal if they can’t consummate the addictive act. All addition involves long-term, sometimes lifelong, neuroplastic change in the brain.”
Because two things held in mind at the same time begin to connect with each other, it is ironic to think that chemical messengers such as dopamine (excitement) and oxytocin (bonding) become triggered more by the titillation (pseudo-intimacy) of images and objects than the real thing.
Mental associations do matter.
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Lifelong Skinned Knees
Psychologist Jim Knipe (Forgash & Copeley, Eds.,2008) will often tell clients the following story:
“Imagine a little girl who falls down and skins her knee, and it hurts. Her knee is bleeding and she runs into the house. A loving parent sees her and says, ‘Oh, it hurts, doesn’t it? Come over here. Let me wash it off. Yes, it hurts! I’ll put a bandage on it. Come sit in my lap for a little while.’ It is easy to see that after a few minutes, for this little girl, this lap will become pretty boring, and she will want to go back out and play again. If the parent asks her if her knee still hurts, she is likely to say, ‘No,’ as she bounds out the door.
Now think of another little girl just down the street who also skins her knee in the same way, and runs into her house, but instead either has no adult available to soothe her, or has an adult who says, ‘Stop crying right now! If you don’t stop crying I’m going to give you something to cry about. I won’t help you until you stop crying.’
This second child now has two problems. Her knee still hurts, and also, now she is bad if she cries. If in the future she falls down and hurts herself again, she is not very likely to go into the house looking for help. She may wonder, years later, following a sad event in her life, why she is unable to cry about it. Or she may wonder why she cries so easily, as if there is always this reservoir of tears ready to spill out.”
This second child is clearly an example of “dissociation”; where distressing, indeed “traumatic life events are excluded from conscious awareness, resulting in anxiety, odd avoidance behaviors, and (psychosomatic) symptoms…”
“In addition,” says Knipe, “it seems that for many clients with extensive childhood histories of abuse and neglect, a major element of their dilemma was that their deepest needs and feelings were not ‘seen.’ That is, their inner experience was not lovingly acknowledged, and thus validated, by a caretaker. This lack of validation of inner experience is hypothesized…to contribute to the emotional pathology of adults who have difficulty regulating their own affect…”
In their book, Attached; The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find–And Keep–Love (2010), authors Levine and Heller observe that “John Bowlby (the father of attachment theory) believed that attachment styles are a function of life experience – especially of our interaction with our parents during infancy. A person will develop a secure attachment style if her parents are sensitive and responsive to her needs. Such a child will learn that she can rely on her parents, confident that they’ll be available to her whenever she needs them” (like the first child with the skinned knee). “But Bowlby maintained that that it didn’t end there; he believed a secure child would carry this confidence into adulthood and future relationships with romantic partners.”
Levine and Heller ask if the research data support Bowlby’s predictions? Where does secure attachment come from? After citing several studies, the authors succinctly conclude: “As more studies become available, there is increasing evidence that a secure attachment style doesn’t originate from a single source. The equation of a caring and sensitive parent producing a secure-for-life child is too one dimensional; instead it seems that an entire mosaic of factors comes together to create (a secure) attachment pattern (including genetic predisposition and lifelong experiences).”
Nevertheless, the research is clear. Adult responses to “skinned knees” have huge and lifelong consequences. It is sad and sobering to think that some skinned knees – never heal.
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Attachment Styles and Sexual Intimacy
I’m not sure if it’s fate or coincidence that I chose to write this blog over Valentine’s weekend, but here goes.
The reader is urged to consult the previous blog (January, 2015) for information about attachment styles. Attachment research broadly divides into “secure” attachment and “insecure attachment,” with insecure attachment further divided into “anxious” and “avoidant” styles.
Sue Johnson, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, distinguished research professor, and developer of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT). Her latest book, Love Sense; The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships (2013) provides the basis for this post.
From the section “Sex Follows Connection,” Johnson writes:
“Our culture endorses the idea that sex brings emotional attachment, that it creates the bond that ties a couple together. In short, love follows sex. But much more significant is the movement in the other direction. Numerous studies over the past ten years show how the three attachment styles–secure, anxious, and avoidant–influence our motives for having sex, our sexual performance and satisfaction, and the impact of sex on our love relationships.
Those of us who are avoidant, that is uncomfortable with emotional closeness and dependence on others, are more likely to have what I term ‘sealed-off sex.’ The focus here is on one’s own sensations. Sex is self-centered and self-affirming, a performance aimed at achieving climax and confirming one’s own sexual skill. Technique is prized; openness and vulnerability shunned….Partners’ feelings are deemed insignificant and are easily dismissed.
Because pleasure without emotional engagement is shallow and fleeting, this kind of sex needs continual boosting to be thrilling. Novel techniques and new partners can momentarily heighten excitement, but the incessant experimenting can lead to unsafe practices and coercive pressure being applied to partners who are hesitant to participate….Sealed-off sex is one-dimensional and leaves both partners dissociated. It undermines emotional bonds. It is also, in the end, less satisfying. Research indicates that it actually reduces arousal and results in less frequent orgasms….
More anxiously attached people, by contrast, tend to have ‘solace sex,‘ that is, to use sex as proof of how much they are loved. There is emotional engagement, but the chief feeling is anxiety. For such people, who are highly vigilant and sensitive to even a hint of rejection, sex serves as reassurance that they are valued and desired. For men, it is usually the sex act itself that gives comfort. For women, it is the kissing and cuddling that precedes and follows it….”
Dr. Johnson also talks about these styles in her book Hold Me Tight (2008). Regarding “solace sex,” Johnson quotes the words of a female client: “Sex with Frank is okay. But to be truthful, it is the cuddling I really want. And the reassurance. It’s like sex is a test, and if he desires me, then I feel safe. Of course, if he ever isn’t horny, then I take it real personally and get scared.” Johnson concludes: “When sex is an antianxiety pill, it cannot truly be erotic. Solace sex can help keep a relationship stable for a while, but it can also feed into raw spots and negative cycles. When anything goes wrong in the mutual-desire department, there is instant hurt and negativity. If this kind of sex is the norm in a relationship, partners can get caught in obsessively trying to perform to please or in being so demanding that it turns off sexual desire. When physical intimacy becomes all about tamping down attachment fears, it can drive lovers apart.”
Now, back to Love Sense (2013):
“Sexual satisfaction for both the anxiously attached and the avoidant is constricted; the anxious partner is preoccupied with being loved, and the avoidant partner is determined to stay detached….The most satisfying and orgasmic sex, what I call ‘synchrony sex,‘ occurs when partners are securely attached.
A secure bond is characterized by emotional openness and responsiveness in the bedroom as well as out. That leads to better communication and engaged, focused attention, which in turn leads to greater arousal, pleasure, and satisfaction….Think about it. If you trust that your partner is there for you, then you can relax and let go without fear of embarrassment or rejection. Safety fosters a willingness to experiment, take risks, and be fully immersed in the sexual encounter. Sex becomes more spontaneous, passionate, and joyful.
From Hold Me Tight (2008), Johnson writes: “Psychiatrist Dan Stern of Cornell Medical School also uses the word (synchrony) when he observes that secure lovers are attuned to each other, sensing each other’s inner state and intention and responding to each other’s shifting states of arousal, in the same way that an empathetic mother is attuned to her baby….This synchrony gives a ‘tacit sense of deep rapport’ and is the essence of connection – emotional, physical, sand sexual. Emotional safety shapes physical synchrony, and physical synchrony shapes emotional safety.
Responsiveness outside the bedroom carries on into it. Connected partners can reveal their sexual vulnerabilities and desires without fear of being rejected. We are all afraid that we are somehow not ‘enough’ in bed….Secure, loving partners can relax, let go, and immerse themselves in the pleasure of lovemaking. They can talk openly, without getting embarrassed or offended, about what turns them off or on.”
Interesting. Sounds like some of the best sex therapy might come from unraveling the “attachment knots” from earlier life experiences.
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Dan Siegel (Part 3): Attachment Styles & Parenting Approaches
In this third and final blog from The Developing Mind; How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are (1999; 2012), author and renowned psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, MD, uses attachment research to discuss not only attachment styles, but the parenting approaches they influence and are influenced by. Siegel writes:
“Children challenge parents continually. How parents respond will set the tone of their interactions and will shape the development of their children’s capacity to regulate their states of mind and shifts in emotions. Take, for example, a fourteen-month-old boy who wants to climb onto a table with a lamp on it. One possible parental response would be to yell ‘No!’ and then take the boy outside, where his drive to climb can be ‘attuned to.’ Another response would be not to notice the attempt to climb, to hear the lamp come crashing down, to pick it up, and either to tell the boy quietly not to do it again or just to ignore him for the rest of the evening. A third response would be for the parent to yell ‘No!’and reprimand the boy, hug him out of guilt, then distance herself from him because he has disappointed her. A fourth approach would be to become enraged and throw the lamp to the floor next to the boy, to teach him never to do that again.
Which attachment pattern would be associated with each form of prohibition/disconnection and repair? Think of how the child over time would learn to regulate his baseline emotional state as well as his aroused state in each case, if each pattern of interaction were to be repeated many times. These four parental responses would be associated with the attachment patterns of security, avoidance, ambivalence (anxiety), and disorganization, respectively.
Security
The first year of life is filled with the attunement of infant and attachment figure, which often centers around the upbeat, high vitality affects of interest/excitement and enjoyment/joy. The sympathetic system is being activated and developed at a high level during this period….(If) a pattern of attunement like the first one described above is chronically repeated, the securely attached child will experience an aroused state (excited about climbing) that is responded to by the parent with a prohibition (inducing parasympathetic activation and a sense of shame), rapidly followed by a repair (attuning to the gist of the initial aroused state and redirecting it in socially acceptable ways)….
Avoidance
The avoidantly attached child is not so fortunate and learns little about the emotional state of the parent, with no warning about the parental response, which in fact may be quite uninvolved (neglectful) or severe and misattuned (rejecting). In such a dyad, it is likely that the general level of shared emotion is quite low, possibly resulting in an underdevelopment of the child’s capacity for normal levels of interest/excitement and enjoyment/joy….This, coupled with the generally low levels of attunement and sensitivity to the child’s signals, may produce an excess in overall parasympathetic tone. The child’s early experience may have a significant impact on the expression of affect and access to conscious awareness of emotion….
Ambivalence (Anxiety)
In the third approach, parental facial expressions of continued disapproval, eye gaze aversion, and body language of disconnection or anger are all perceived by the child. The child’s high-arousal states may be attuned to sometimes, but if they are not, disconnection and shame may be associated with humiliation and may thus become toxic, especially if disconnection is prolonged or associated with parental anger….Inconsistent attunements and repair may lead to excessive arousal, so that the sympathetic system may often be unchecked because of a diminished parasympathetic system response. Alternatively, prolonged despair may result if the parasympathetic system is excessively activated. Anticipatory anxiety and fear of separation may be evident. Separation in the ambivalently attached child means having to rely on the self for ineffective emotion regulation….
Disorganization
In the fourth pattern, the child’s behavior elicits a rageful parental response, producing terror in the child. This is not simply the child’s fear of consequences, but a fear for safety induced by the attachment figure. The child’s adaptation to this suddenly induced fear state (high levels of both sympathetic and parasympathetic discharge) is a conflictual one: The accelerator and the brakes are being applied simultaneously….The parent…may unintentionally and unknowingly be providing the child with a set of responses that are disorienting and disorganizing. As an attachment figure, such a parent has become a source of fear and confusion, not of safety and security. The intense and frightening moments of disconnection with the parent remain unrepaired. As the parent disappears into rage, the child becomes lost in terror. These disorganizing and disorienting experiences become an essential part of how the child learns to self-regulate behavior and emotional states. The child has the double insult of becoming engulfed in confusion and terror induced by the parent, and of losing the relationship with an attachment figure that might have provided a safe haven and sense of security.”
Conclusion? “The lessons from attachment research can guide our understanding of the powerful effect interpersonal relationships can have on the development and ongoing functioning of self-regulation….The interactions that occur have direct effects on the emotional experience in that moment. Within the context of an attachment relationship, the child’s developing mind and the structure of the child’s brain will be shaped in such a way that the ability to regulate emotion in the future is affected.”
Readers are encouraged to consult Siegel’s Parenting from the Inside Out (2003; 2013), which explores further how one’s attachment style influences their parenting approach.
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Dan Siegel (Part 2): Memory Reorganization & Consolidation (“The Malleability of Memory”)
I begin Part 2 with the same introduction I began Part 1:
In working with clients, I probably utilize, refer to, and even quote the research of Dan Siegel more than any other source; especially his book The Developing Mind; How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2nd ed (2012); what one reviewer has called “a tour de force.” The bio on the back book cover reads: “Daniel J. Siegel, MD, is an internationally acclaimed author, award-winning educator, and renowned child psychiatrist. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles, where he serves as Co-Investigator at the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, and Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center.” Etcetera. Etcetera.
Taking some time off in the last month, I took The Developing Mind with me for rereading. I was so re-inspired by its contents that I decided to devote the next two or three blogs to select themes.
From the chapter on “Memory,” this second blog addresses “memory reorganization and consolidation”; basically, the malleability of memory. While the first half of the blog might seem tedious (though necessary), the last half will illustrate with more pleasurable reading. Siegel writes:
“In memory research, the initial impact of an experience on the brain has been called an ‘engram.’ If you visited the Eiffel Tower with a friend and were talking about existential philosophy and impressionist paintings as you were having your picnic , your engram might include various levels of experience: semantic (factual – something about philosophy or art or knowledge about the Tower), autobiographical (your sense of yourself at that time in your life), somatic (what your body felt like at the time), perceptual (what things looked like, how they smelled), emotional (your mood at the time), and behavioral (what you were doing with your body)….Scientists have named the first two types of consciously accessible memory ‘explicit’ or ‘declarative’ memory. The other forms of memory are quite distinct and are grouped together as ‘implicit’ or ‘nondeclarative’ memory….
When we try to retrieve an ‘original memory,’ in fact, we may be calling up the gist at first (‘I was at the Eiffel Tower when I was in my early twenties’) and then later trying to reconstruct the details. This reconstruction process may be profoundly influenced by the present environment, the questioning context itself, and other factors, such as current emotions and our perception of the expectations of those listening to the response. Memory is not a static thing, but an active set of processes….Remembering is not merely the activation of an old engram; it is the construction of a new neural net profile with features of the old engram and elements of memory from other experiences, as well as influences from the present state of mind.” (italics mine)
To paraphrase Siegel thus far: Memory is both conscious (explicit) and unconscious (implicit), – and changeable. “Brain plasticity” is apropos. Siegel continues:
“(Memory) consolidation appears to involve the reorganization of existing memory traces, not the laying down of new engrams. In this manner, consolidation may make new associational linkages, condense elements of memory into new clusters of representations, and incorporate previously unintegrated elements into a functional whole….(This) consolidation process appears to depend on the rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep stage, which is thought to be attempting to make sense of the day’s activities. Though filled with a combination of seemingly random activations, aspects of the day’s experiences, and elements from the more distant past, dreams may be a fundamental way in which the mind consolidates the myriad of explicit recollections into a coherent set of representations for permanent, consolidated memory….
Unresolved traumatic experiences from this perspective may involve an impairment in the cortical consolidation process, which leaves the memories of these events out of permanent memory. But the person may be prone to experiencing continually intrusive implicit images of past horrors. Nightmares, occurring during the dream stage of sleep and involving active REM sleep disturbances, may reveal futile attempts of the brain to resolve and consolidate such blocked memory configurations. Dream stages of sleep are thought to play a central role in reorganizing memory and in reinforcing the connections between memory and emotion….
During the normal dreaming state, the left and right hemispheres are activated in an alternating, rhythmic, and synchronous fashion….REM sleep is crucial for memory consolidation….Memory may be ‘reorganized’ during dreaming via the simultaneous retrieval of (right brain/hemisphere) of information that is then encoded into new consolidated forms (left brain/hemisphere) via the dream process….
Various studies of trauma patients reveal a significant asymmetry in hemispheric activity, with unresolved traumatic memories being associated with an excessively right dominant activation patterns….These findings, combined with the clinical observation of REM sleep disturbances in those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), support the proposal that bilateral cooperation of the hemispheres may be necessary for the consolidation of memory in general – and that failure to consolidate memories of traumatic events may be at the core of unresolved trauma. Such a view also points to the generalization that impairment in bilateral integration of information (the flow of energy and representations across the hemispheres) may be proposed as a marker of psychological impairment.”
The reader is urged to peruse the information about EMDR Therapy in this website, vis-a-vis the effects of REM sleep on memory reorganization. I often think of EMDR Therapy as getting the potential benefits of REM (dream) sleep on distressing memories – while awake!
To illustrate the malleability of memory, Pepperdine University professor Louis Cozolino tells the story of “The Magic Tricycle” (2010):
“Sheldon was a man in his late 60s who came to therapy for help with his many anxieties and fears. As a child, his parents had hidden him from the Nazis in a storage room behind the home of family friends. One day, after finding out that she and Sheldon’s father would be taken to the concentration camps, Sheldon’s mother told him to be a good boy, said goodbye, and left….Describing these days, Sheldon recalled alternating states of terror and boredom, during which he would either sit and rock or ride his tricycle around in slow tight circles. The slightest noise would startle him and he feared that each passing siren might be the police coming for him. Each day, exhausted by fear, he would eventually fall asleep.
The intervening decades had not diminished the impact of his experiences during the war; 60 years later, he still found himself reflexively rocking or walking in small slow circles when he became frightened….In repeatedly recalling these experiences in treatment, he sometimes mentioned how he wished he could have left the house where he was hidden and traveled down the narrow streets to his grandmother’s house….
One day, I asked him for permission to change his memories just a bit. After a few quizzical looks he agreed to close his eyes and tell me the entire story again, at which point I would interrupt him and make some suggestions. As he came to the part of the story where he rode around in circles, I asked him, ‘What would you do if this was a magic tricycle and it could take you through walls without getting hurt?’ I felt Sheldon had sufficient ego strength to allow him to simultaneously engage in the role-play while staying fully in touch with present reality.
After some hesitation, Sheldon said, ‘I would ride right through the house and out onto the sidewalk.’ ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Let’s go!’ Sheldon had been primed for our imaginary therapy play because he had spent many enjoyable hours of storytelling, cuddling, and laughing with his grandchildren….
After some mild hesitation, he pedaled though the house. As he got close to the door, however, he said, ‘They’ll see me and kill me.’
‘What if the magic tricycle has the power to make you invisible?’ I asked.
‘I think that’ll do,’ said Sheldon, and he pedaled through the front of the house and out on the sidewalk. Once he got out of the house, he knew what to do….(W)hen he finally got to his grandmother’s house she was home and, as always, happy to see him. He told his grandmother about his invisible tricycle and how scared he was in his hiding place. He went on to tell her of the end of the war, his travels, and raising his family. Finally, almost like a prayer, Sheldon told her how, many years from now, she would have the most beautiful great-great-grandchildren living in freedom, redeeming her suffering.
Over the next few months, whenever Sheldon experienced his childhood fears and anxieties, we would revisit his story and modify different details. These changes seemed to grow more detailed and more vivid in his mind. His imagination gave him the power to master many of his past fears. Because memory is modified each time it is remembered, Sheldon’s brain was able to gradually contaminate his painful childhood with his present safety and joy….He even began to tell his grandchildren stories about a little boy with a magic tricycle who accomplished great things with his courage and wit….Nothing had changed about his childhood except that now, when he remembered his hiding place, he also remembered his magic tricycle.
An important part of restructuring memory is…the ability to re-conceptualize a memory based on evolving maturity. This process requires being able to hold the memory in mind without being emotionally overwhelmed and simultaneously bringing it into the present, picturing it as it would look from the perspective of who we are and what we know today.” (italics mine)
Next: Dan Siegel (Part 3): Attachment Styles & Parenting Approaches
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Dan Siegel (Part 1): Emotional Sensitivity & Cognitive Override
In working with clients, I probably utilize, refer to, and even quote the research of Dan Siegel more than any other source; especially his book The Developing Mind; How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2nd ed (2012); what one reviewer has called “a tour de force.” The bio on the back book cover reads: “Daniel J. Siegel, MD, is an internationally acclaimed author, award-winning educator, and renowned child psychiatrist. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of California, Los Angeles, where he serves as Co-Investigator at the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, and Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center.” Etcetera. Etcetera.
Taking some time off in the last month, I took The Developing Mind with me for rereading. I was so re-inspired by its contents that I decided to devote the next two or three blogs to select themes. From the chapter on “Self-Regulation,” this first blog addresses “emotional sensitivity and cognitive override.” Siegel writes:
“Each of us has a ‘threshold of response,’ or the minimum amount of stimulation needed in order to activate our (nervous) systems. Those with a hair-trigger response mechanism will find life filled with challenging situations. Their brains will frequently fire off messages of ‘This is important – pay attention!’ Those with ‘tougher skins’ will not readily respond with arousal and will be less emotionally sensitive to the same stimuli.
Sensitivity…may be both constitutional and modified by experience. Both variables may also be dependent on an individual’s state of mind at a particular moment in time. We can have times in our lives when our ‘nerves are raw’ and we react quickly to previously innocuous events. When we are preoccupied by something else or emotionally defending ourselves, we can be less sensitive than we might otherwise be. Alterations in our threshold of responding may be an important way our brains regulate emotional responses.
How can a mind alter sensitivity?….By increasing the amount of stimulation (one needs) to become activated, the brain can directly decrease its sensitivity to the environment. Modifications in the appraisal system itself can also decrease or increase sensitivity. For example, if you have recently seen a violent movie with gunshots and murders, your mind may be sensitized to loud sounds and dark alleys. If, upon returning to your car in a dark parking lot, you hear a sudden loud noise, you may be more likely to become aroused and to appraise such a situation as dangerous. If you had just been to a party with a lot of noise and fireworks, your mind would be less vigilant for signs of danger and would be less sensitive to those same sounds in the dark parking lot. Recent experience primes the mind for a context-specific change in sensitivity.
Repeated patterns of intense emotional experiences may engrain chronic alterations in the degree of sensitivity. For example, overwhelming terror, especially early in life, may permanently alter an individual’s sensitivity to a particular stimulus related to the trauma. If a cat scratches and bites a young child, the sight of even a distant cat may evoke a strong emotional response of fear in this individual for years into the future….
Some early experiences that sensitize the arousal system to fire off may never be desensitized. (Persons) may remain in a chronically hypersensitized state. However, specific appraisal of the excessively sensitive general arousal stage can be changed. Let’s look at an example of this “cognitive override” mechanism.
As a young child, a forty-year-old man had been mauled by a dog; in the incident, he lost part of his left ear and sustained deep wounds to his arms and chest. Throughout his youth, he naturally avoided dogs. As a young father, he dreaded the day when his own children would ask to have a dog as a pet. He came to therapy when that day indeed arrived. What could be done? Every time he saw a dog, his heart would pound; he would sweat profusely, clutch his chest, and feel a sense of doom. This panic was once treated with medications, which were effective but excessively sedating for him. The man wanted to get a dog for his children, but he couldn’t live with the fear.
Some might appropriately say that parents should let children know about the limits of what can or can’t be done. They might feel in this case that the father’s need to have a canine-free house should have been communicated and respected. Another possibility–the one that this man preferred–was to try to ‘deal’ with his fears. The original accident had happened when he was two years old. He had little explicit recall of anything from that period….And so his primary form of memory for this event was implicit: He exhibited emotional (fear and panic) and behavioral (avoidance) memories of the accident. Fortunately, he knew about the experience from the stories he had been told by his parents and from his own semantic memory….Seeing his mauled ear in the mirror also reminded him each day that something terrifying had occurred.
This patient’s amygdala was probably exquisitely sensitized to the sight of a dog….(A) preconscious feedback loop involving the perceptual system and the amygdala would have allowed for the fight-flight response to be initiated even before he became aware that he had seen a dog….Once we are hurt, our amygdalas will do everything they can to keep us from allowing it to happen again.
Teaching this man about the nature of the fear response and the neural circuits underlying it was relieving for him. Relaxation techniques and guided imagery with exposure to self-generated images of dogs were provided. Nevertheless, he still had an initial startle response to dogs. A ‘cognitive override’ strategy was then tried. That is, this (man) learned to acknowledge the relevance of his amygdala’s response to the present dog and the past trauma….He then would say to himself, ‘I know that you’re trying to protect me, and that you think this is a dangerous thing.’ What he would say next was what eventually allowed him to buy his children a (small) dog: ‘I do not need to see this sense of panic as something to fear or get agitated about.’ He would then imagine his amygdala sighing with relief, having discharged its duties to warn, and the sense of doom would dissipate. After several weeks of performing these internal override discussions, he felt ready to proceed with the purchase of a pet. Six months later, he and his family were doing well with the new addition to their household.
This example illustrates that even if the sensitivity to particular (triggers) cannot be changed, a person’s response to the initial arousal can be diverted in ways that lead to a more flexible life (bold italics, mine)….This individual’s past trauma led to a rigid pattern in the flow of information processing and energy (the sight of a dog led to massive arousal and the sense of fear). By altering the engrained patterns of information and energy flow, the (man) became more flexible in his behavior, and he was able to move forward more adaptively in his life.” (pp. 275-278)
Next: Dan Siegel (Part 2): Memory Reorganization & Consolidation
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs
Rethinking Couple Therapy
I do a lot of couple counseling. THE BOOK I try and get into the hands of embattled couples is The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (1999) by John Gottman, PhD. Dr. Gottman is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, and along with his wife Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD, is the founder and director of the Gottman Institute and the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle. He is simply one of, if not, “the” foremost relationship experts in the world.
Best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell provides a good introduction to Gottman in the first chapter of his book Blink (2006). Entitled “The Theory of Thin Slices: How a Little Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way,” Gladwell writes:
“How much do you think can be learned about (a couple’s) marriage by watching (a) fifteen-minute videotape? Can we tell if their relationship is healthy or unhealthy? I suspect that most of us would say (fifteen minutes) doesn’t tell us much. It’s much too short….To make an accurate prediction about something as serious as the future of a marriage–indeed, to make a prediction of any sort–it seems that we would have to gather a lot of information and in as many different contexts as possible.
But John Gottman has proven that we don’t have to do that at all. Since the 1980s, Gottman has brought more than three thousand married couples…into that small room in his ‘love lab’ near the University of Washington campus. Each couple has been videotaped, and the results have been analyzed according to something Gottman dubbed SPAFF (for specific affect), a coding system that has twenty separate categories corresponding to every conceivable emotion that a married couple might express during a conversation. Disgust, for example, is 1, contempt is 2, anger is 7, defensiveness is 10, whining is 11, sadness is 12, stonewalling is 13, neutral is 14, and so on….When (the research staff) watch a marriage videotape, they assign a SPAFF code to every second of the couple’s interaction, so that a fifteen-minute conflict discussion ends us being translated into a row of eighteen hundred numbers – nine hundred for the husband and nine hundred for the wife. (When the data from electrodes and sensors are factored in about each partner’s physiology during the discussion, a great deal of information has been gathered in a short amount of time).
On the basis of those calculations, Gottman has proven something remarkable. If he analyzes an hour of a husband and wife talking, he can predict with 95 percent accuracy whether that couple will still be married fifteen years later. If he watches a couple for fifteen minutes, his success rate is around 90 percent. Recently, a professor who works with Gottman…discovered that if they looked at only three minutes of a couple talking, they could still predict with fairly impressive accuracy who was going to get divorced and who was going to make it. The truth of a marriage can be understood in a much shorter time than anyone imagined” (thus the term “thin-slicing,” referring to the ability to find “patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience”).
Simply put, the research behind Gottman Method Couple Therapy (GMCT) has caused us to rethink couple therapy. Discussing “Why Most (Couple) Therapy Fails” in chapter one of The Seven Principles book, Gottman writes:
“Perhaps the biggest myth of all is that communication–and more specifically, learning to resolve your conflicts–is the royal road to romance and an enduring, happy marriage….The sweeping popularity of this approach is easy to understand….So it seems to make sense that calmly and lovingly listening to each other’s perspective would lead couples to find compromise solutions and regain their marital composure.
The most common technique recommended for resolving conflict–used in one guise or another by most marital therapists–is called active listening. For example, a therapist might urge you to try some form of the listener-speaker exchange. Let’s say that Judy is upset that Bob works late most nights. The therapist asks Judy to state her complaints as ‘I’ statements that focus on what she’s feeling rather than hurling accusations at Bob….Then Bob is asked to paraphrase both the content and the feelings of Judy’s message, and to check with her if he’s got it right. (This shows he is actively listening to her.)….By forcing couples to see their differences from each other’s perspective, problem solving is supposed to take place without anger….The problem is that it doesn’t work….
When you really think about it, it’s not difficult to see why active listening so often fails. Bob might do his best to listen thoughtfully to Judy’s complaints. But he is not a therapist listening to a patient whine about a third party. The person his wife is trashing behind all those ‘I’ statements is him….If you think validation and active listening will make conflict resolution easier for you and your spouse, by all means use it. There are circumstances where it can certainly come in handy. But here’s the catch: Even if it does makes your fights ‘better’ or less frequent, it alone cannot save your marriage. Even happily married couples can have screaming matches – loud arguments don’t necessarily harm a marriage….(We) now understand that this approach to counseling doesn’t work, not just because it’s nearly impossible for most couples to do well, but more importantly because successful conflict resolution isn’t what makes marriages succeed. One of the startling findings of our research is that most couples who have maintained happy marriages rarely do anything that even partly resembles active listening when they’re upset.”
CAVEAT: Don’t go thinking that the Gottman research has no place for “active listening” and “I-messages.” He writes later in Seven Principles: “But I have found that this same listening technique can be extremely beneficial if you use it during discussions where you are not your spouse’s target. In this context, you’ll feel far freer to be readily supportive and understanding of your spouse and vice versa. This can only heighten the love and trust you feel.” (Pages 88-89 offer helpful instructions for having this discussion.)
So “What Does Make Marriage Work?” according to this research? Gottman writes: “It soon became apparent that…happy marriages were never perfect unions. Some couples who said they were very satisfied with each other still had significant differences in temperament, in interests, in family values. Conflict was not infrequent. They argued, just as unhappy couples did, over money, jobs, kids, housekeeping, sex, and in-laws. The mystery was how they so adroitly navigated their way through these difficulties and kept their marriages happy and stable.
(The closer) I looked at happy marriages the clearer it became that they were alike in seven telltale ways. Happily married couples may not be aware that they follow these Seven Principles, but they all do. Unhappy marriages always come up short…usually in many of them.” Those “Seven (Research) Principles” are as follows:
#1 – Enhance Your Love Maps
#2 – Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration
#3 – Turn Toward Each Other Instead of Away
#4 – Let Your Partner Influence You (a.k.a. The Positive Perspective)
#5 – Solve Your Solvable Problems
#6 – Overcome Gridlock (a.k.a. Honor One Another’s Dreams)
#7 – Create Shared Meaning
In rethinking couple therapy according to this research, perhaps the most distinctive and definitive feature is the focus of therapy, succinctly stated by Gottman in the final paragraph of chapter two.
“I now know that the key to reviving or divorce-proofing a relationship is not in how you handle disagreements but in how you are with each other when you’re not fighting. Although (the) Seven Principles will also guide you in coping with conflict, the foundation of my approach is to strengthen the friendship that is at the heart of any marriage.”
I close with Gottman’s example of Nathaniel and Olivia.
“Take the case of hardworking Nathaniel, who runs his own import business and works very long hours. In another marriage, his schedule might be a major liability. But he and his wife Olivia have found ways to stay connected. They talk frequently on the phone during the day. When she has a doctor’s appointment, he remembers to call to see how it went. When he has a meeting with an important client, she’ll check in to see how it fared. When they have chicken for dinner, she gives him both drumsticks because she knows he likes them best. When he makes blueberry pancakes for the kids Saturday morning, he’ll leave the blueberries out of hers because he knows she doesn’t like them. Although he’s not religious, he accompanies her to church each Sunday because it’s important to her. And although she’s not crazy about spending a lot of time with their relatives, she has pursued a friendship with Nathaniel’s mother and sisters because family matters so much to him.
If all of this sounds humdrum and unromantic, it’s anything but. Through small but important ways Olivia and Nathaniel are maintaining the friendship that is the foundation of their love. As a result, they have a marriage that is far more passionate than do couples who punctuate their lives together with romantic vacations and lavish anniversary gifts, but have fallen out of touch in their daily lives. Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.”
Notice the change of focus? From conflict to non-conflict? From reactivity to proactivity? Causes one to rethink couple therapy, doesn’t it?
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
Dark Nights of the Soul
Several months ago, a therapist-friend gave me the book Dark Nights of the Soul; A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals (2004) by psychologist Thomas Moore, PhD. Moore has also authored the bestsellers Care of the Soul (1992) and SoulMates (1994) as well as many other books. Moore was a Catholic monk for twelve years and later became a psychologist.
The back cover of Dark Nights (2004) reads: “Our lives are filled with emotional tunnels: the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments, or just an ongoing sense of dissatisfaction with life. Society tends to view these ‘dark nights’ in clinical terms as obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible. But Moore shows how honoring these periods of fragility as periods of incubation and positive opportunities to delve into the soul’s deepest needs can provide healing and a new understanding of life’s meaning. Dark Nights of the Soul presents these metaphoric dark nights not as the enemy, but as times of transition, occasions to restore yourself, and transformational rites of passage…”
The phrase “dark night of the soul” comes from the 16th century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross; a member of the Carmelite Christian, religious order who, along with St. Teresa of Avila, tried to reform that order. For his efforts, John was imprisoned for eight months during which he wrote several remarkable poems and commentaries on those poems, one of which was entitled “Dark Night of the Soul.”
In the second chapter of the book, “Rites of Passage,” Moore tells the story of English poet John Keats, who “had just turned twenty-six when tuberculosis put him on his deathbed. His physical pain was great, but more difficult for him was the separation from the woman he loved, Fanny Browne. Four months before his death and in one of his last letters, he writes to his friend Charles Brown: ‘I can bear to die – but I cannot bear to leave her….Where can I look for consolation or ease?….I fear there is no one can give me any comfort.’ Yet in the next letter, his last, he still has his good humor, and he makes a simple but important statement. ‘You must bring your philosophy to bear–as I do mine, really–or how should I be able to live?’ Keats, a young man of remarkable maturity, had developed a philosophy of the soul by which he could live.”
“In a key letter, written to his brother and sister-in-law when he was twenty-three, he said that being intelligent is not enough. Your intelligence has to be converted into a soul. ‘Do you not see,’ he wrote, ‘how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul?…Call the world if you please ‘The value of Soul-making.'”
Moore writes: “Keats converted his emotional and physical suffering into a highly intelligent and sensitive soul through his letters and his poems….One difference between depression and a dark night of the soul is that depression is a mood you endure and try to get through, while a dark night is a process in which your course soul is refined and your intelligence deepened. How you imagine your ordeal makes all the difference.
Creating a carefully constructed and passionate philosophy of life is not something modern people do….Many get their life guidance from television and rarely have original thoughts about their experiences. Others may have opinions based on the latest studies but generally have not worked out a deep vision. They are informed, but they haven’t thought deeply enough.
Without a philosophy of life, you may be swamped by your emotions and believe that life is meaningless. You see the chaos in and around you, and you assume that it could never make sense. With this attitude it is easy to latch onto simplistic explanations, which are never far away….But these borrowed and purchased strategies aren’t enough when a dark night has really taken hold of you. You need to work out a system for yourself….
How do you create a supportive and livable philosophy? First, you take your life seriously. You don’t have to be morose about it, but you must realize that you can’t pass on the responsibility for your life to anyone else. Today, people don’t always feel the weight of their existence. They live by superficial values and naive ideas. Instead of pursuing deep and solid pleasures, they lose themselves in light entertainments, legal and illegal drugs, and general unconsciousness. The only time they feel any emotional weight is when they are depressed, but then it is only symptomatic and painful. Depression is a strong emotion, but a dark night is a slow transformation fueled by the deep issues at work defining the very meaning of your life….
A philosophy of life begins to take shape when you educate your heart and cultivate your life. You read, you talk, and you think; you don’t just act. You consider your experience and take lessons from it. You may need to write these lessons down in a journal and talk about them with friends. Deep conversation is a valuable way of cultivating an intelligence about life. Many people in the past used letters, written thoughtfully and honestly, as a way of self-education. In these people their philosophy of life came into being through the process Keats called ‘soul-making’….
Henry David Thoreau lived in a tiny cabin at Walden Pond outside Boston for over two years to practice a life of reflection, to help him move more consciously into his life. For him it was clearly a way to make an important shift, a concrete rite of passage. About this experience he wrote, ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’ You can prepare for your dark nights in the same way, by finding your own style of retreat and reflection, developing a vision that supports and inspires you. Everyone needs a ‘Walden Pond’ on his own, a real or metaphorical place where you can take stock of your life and find a sense of purpose and values by which you can live.”
Psychotherapy and counseling can help this process. Again, Moore writes: “A philosophy of life elevates and airs out what might otherwise be an emotional swamp. Feelings are wet and damp, inundating us and preventing us from thinking clearly….The work of psychotherapy, too, aerates a soggy soul. You consider your overwhelming emotions and sort them through until an idea appears. This idea may not be a solution to your problems, but it may mark a first step in drying out. I have seen people in therapy swamped in love, drowning in passion, deluged in feelings. Simply talking about the emotions offers relief and begins a process that leads to a less compulsive lifestyle.”
Moore’s last sentence is worth repeating: “Simply talking about the emotions offers relief and begins a process that leads to a less compulsive lifestyle.”
Bill Bray, Colorado Springs, CO
